MMU's Centre for Enterprise Blog

Here's What's Going On!

2031-04-21T07:05:00.000-07:00

Our Most Recent Blog Post:

Dr Izzy Warren Smith concludes that more emphasis should be applied to "economic development" rather than "economic growth" read more

What's Going On:
Are you the owner or share holder of a small North West business looking to grow substantially in the next few years? Applications are now being invited for the March 2012 programme. Visit the 10,000 Small Businesses in the North West site for more information and to register your business.

What's Coming Up:
Keep checking for upcoming events.

Welcome

2030-04-21T04:54:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Manchester Metropolitan University's Centre for Enterprise blog!

Who are we?
The Centre has been a functioning asset to the MMU community since March 2001. In this time period, we have attracted in excess of £10m revenue to support the development of entrepreneurs and their businesses.

So, what exactly do we do? Well, we like to think of ourselves as leaders in the creation and transfer of knowledge for the purposes of developing enterprise and entrepreneurship capability.

In laymen's, we bring together business owners, policy-makers and academics who are interested in improving the environment for entrepreneurship and the competiveness of individuals and firms. In order to do this, we work with students, small businesses, academics, entrepreneurs and other like-minded professionals to execute a veritable repertoire of programmes, activities and events to stimulate and encourage entrepreneurship and enterprise.

Why blog?
The purpose of this blog is to highlight some of the exciting things we achieve and are involved with and to explore, via the avenue of various blog projects, different ideas about key aspects of what we do. Our first blog projet, On Leadership, is a perfect example of this. For this project, we invited academics, entrepreneurs and business owners to discuss anything they wanted in relation to leadership. We all learned alot and raised some interesting questions and healthy debates about what makes a good leader.

In our next project, On Growth, we will receive feedback from similar people about growth and endeavour to really look at what growth means in terms of enterprise and entrepreneurship. We invite you to subscribe to our blog activity by typing your email address in that nifty little box up there on the right, and come along with us as we discover what growth is and how it affects us.

As always, if you would like to contribute to the blog, please contact me, Anyonita, directly at a.green[at]mmu.ac.uk for guidelines and more information.

If you would like to learn more about the Centre, the projects we are involved with and meet our fabulous team, you can visit our website!
If you're on Twitter and would like to connect, be sure to follow us @mmucfe

Growth

2012-01-24T06:26:00.000-08:00

As we enter 2012 we might all have made some resolution based around growth of some sort! Whether it’s to ‘grow’ personally or to ‘grow’ our business, our network profile or our wealth the subliminal pressure to ‘grow’ is there and many of us, if we’re honest, will have an economic imperative driving us.

One look at the BIS website confirms the government’s focus on growth: “Growth is the Government’s top priority and every part of Government is focused on it……” (BIS). The inference is clear for all of us – Growth MUST be good for all of us. After all, if economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society (Kendrick, 1961), then it must be what we all want and need? So, how to achieve this blissful state? Well, economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity which lowers the inputs (labour, capital, material, energy, etc.) for a given amount of output. Aaahh. Efficiency. Economies of scale, technological improvements, innovation. By who though? The government have pinned their hopes on ‘the private sector’. Entrepreneurs and businesses. Back to the BIS website: “The CBI estimates that an additional £50bn could be added to GDP growth within ten years if this potential [of mid sized businesses ] were unlocked”.

That’s a start but ultimately it all ends with us. More pressure, a faster treadmill to run in order to achieve it all.

I wonder why all this emphasis on growth? When the coalition took power, David Cameron launched a happiness survey and eight months of intensive work by civil servants and statisticians identified a ‘top three’ of subjects that matter most to people: health, family and relationships. Not much there about economic growth then – or is that they are all interrelated? I think not. Perhaps we need to be a little more sophisticated in our attitude. Byrnes and Stone (1989) differentiate the connections between economic growth and development:

“economic growth is occurs when more goods may be produced; economic development entails improvements in the quality of life , in the quality of goods available or in the ways production is organised” (Byrnes and Stone. 1989)

Perhaps less emphasis on ‘economic growth’ and a bit more on ‘economic development’ would be a wiser approach for 2012?

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Dr Izzy Warren-Smith is a visiting Research Fellow at MMUBS and lectures in Agricultural Economics and Entrepreneurship at Harper Adams University College. She founded Women in Rural Enterprise (WiRE) which was instrumental to Harper Adams University College receiving the Queens Award in 2006 and for which she received an OBE in 2005.

Managing Documents and Data in a Growing Business

2012-01-09T02:38:00.000-08:00

Most growing SME’s have at least 2 key documents.

A Business Plan or Growth Plan, lets call this a document, as it has mainly words, and has probably been created using a word processor; and the start of a Profit, Loss and Cashflow forecast, lets call this data, as it is mainly numbers and has probably been created using a spreadsheet of some form (however it is still stored in a file, so we can actually call this a document as well).

How are these two key documents stored? Are they on your server, laptop, desktop, iPAD? Are they secure? Who can access them? Who do you want to make these available to? Do they conform to any company standard, or Brand? Are they backed up? Are they under Version Control? Do they get approved? What is the impact on your business if the master copies were corrupted or deleted? What would happen if your hard drive stopped working?

As businesses start to grow, each functional part of the business will start to create its own data and documents. It is important that they all conform to a company standard, with the same look and feel, in particular for all customer facing documents. It is also important that a consistent approach is followed for Document Control and Issue.

Some examples for Documents and Data are detailed below:

Finance – Business Plans, Finance Reports, Management Accounts, Budgets…
Operations – Product Specifications, Production Plans, Schedules, Work Instructions…
R&D – Plans, Specifications, Designs, Protocols, Projects…
Sales – Contracts, Proposals, Tenders, Agreements, Pricing, Sales Forecasts, partner agreements, Franchise Documents…
Marketing – Product/Service Literature, Datasheets, Newsletters, References, Press Releases…

The list goes on…..
Also as your business grows it is important to move away from being dependent on key individuals and move to a more system and process driven business.

To do this, all the systems and processes, including all the above documents and data, typically are documented in a Company Manual, and a set of operating procedures. In ISO terminology (International Standards Organisation), this is referred to as a Quality Manual. Once the Manual and Procedures are written then you need to train employees and check (internal audits) for Conformance and Compliance to the procedures. Training records must be stored. Corrective Actions will then be put in place.

The number of documents and amount of data can grow exponentially and from experience the sooner that growing businesses get this under control the better. It is not easy to manage all the above efficiently for a company with 5 employees. You can imagine the massive increase in complexity and cost of trying to put in a new system with 10 staff and a few hundred documents, image the scenario with 50 staff and a few thousand documents.

On a final note regarding Disaster Recovery, if you to take the most critical, or all of you day to day documents, from your business and store them in ComplianceControl Centre, you are 75% on your way to having a Disaster Recovery Procedure !

As your business grows, I believe your business risk can be reduced, and you can establish better control of your critical documents, data and business processes, by using an Integrated Electronic Document and Quality Management System, like ComplianceControl Centre.

My advice is to start this as soon as possible before it all gets out of control !

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David Forrest is the CEO of Compliance Control Ltd. the provider of an Integrated Electronic Document and Quality Management System. This is provided as a Software as a Service product designed specifically for Small to Medium businesses. The software can be up and running within hours with no hardware or infrastructure purchase required. Contact: david.forrest@compliance-control.com

Thinking about Small Business Growth

2011-12-21T06:36:00.000-08:00

Well, for me the question is – what is Growth? I’d agree on the macro points about education and encouraging entrepreneurship. I’d also agree about considering the tax implications on small business owners. But, I’m not too sure about the investment in Public Sector Jobs.

It’s a bit of a philosophical conundrum for me – What is Growth?

What I’d like to see is diversity in the Small Business Sector with support from central government agencies – back to the old high street ways – where relationships counted. This could encourage strong regional diversity of businesses – and with many diversified businesses the overall outcome would be growth. Perhaps we need to be tackling growth from this Regional point of view rather than from the point of view of which individual businesses or sectors will grow.

A clear Regional strategy which encouraged diversity and a preponderance of small businesses would through it’s very supportive environment ultimately generate some ‘growth’ businesses; but still growth within the economy – (which is as good a measure of growth as any) could still be achieved.

But on a micro level – the reason there are so many small business that don’t grow, is because they’re happy like that. What makes a business grow? Well, rather like a garden, growth has to be tended. It takes time and consideration and often times the market doesn’t allow us to build the relationships necessary for growth.

Growth has the potential to corrupt on many levels – which is why we have legislation in place to manage business practices. So when you grow your business, you are changing it fundamentally. Unless of course you’ve started off with the big business mentality and have structured something from the outset which is to grow

So, rather than trying to grow individual businesses – Regional Strategy, supported by government macro policy to support a diversified small business base could bring back to the Region, not only growth – but an interesting diversity of regionalism. Decentralising, de-monopolising, de-globaling – if these are indeed words, are maybe part of what we should be looking at as part of our growth strategies.

If small businesses support small businesses, and central government supports the small business environment, we can and will grow out of recession, and even the fact that so many small firms don’t actually grow, would be a boon to this sector overall. As Sue has identified, many ‘small businesses will also be sustainable and profitable over time as they have a secure customer and supplier base which works well at the micro level’ - so they are already making an invaluable contribution to this potential strategy.

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My name is Janet Green, my company is DOC Solar and Electrical. I am a participant in the MMU Growth Programme. My background is – I graduated in 1999 with a BA in business admin from LJMU as a mature student and entered the workforce full time for the first time in many years then, making the transition to our family business full time in January 2010.

I have taken our company from Electrical Installation into Sustainable Energy and am driving through our business development of the Environmental sector – keen to make us a well recognised and established deliverer of Renewable Technology in the North West.

On Growth: Susan Marlowe

2011-12-13T03:47:00.000-08:00

To my mind, current assumptions about small business growth remind me of the ‘Emperors new clothes’ fable. Everyone talks about it as if it is a ‘good thing’ and that small firm owners almost have a moral duty to grow their firms – after all: growth, it’s the only game in town! But is it?

We know that in the contemporary economy, there is an over concentration of small ventures in the service sector – it is cheap to start up such firms and requires limited human and fixed capital but because of this very fact, it is a crowded sector where opportunities for growth are constrained by market parameters. So, fact one – there is restricted ‘market space’ for growth in sectors where small firms are over concentrated so for many small firm owners, growth is not an option.

Next fact, the ‘desire’ to grow. What do most small firm owners want from their self employment – well, just what most people want from employment – to pay their mortgage, look after the family and achieve a comfortable life style. Indeed, why should those who own small firms be imbued with a burning desire to go multi-national after all? We do not see continuous critical evaluation of middle managers because they have failed to, or are not that interested in, being the next Philip Green or any top flight CEO.

Finally, why is there a moral imperative for small firm owners to save the economy – surely sound macro-economic management which sustains a mixed economy should be the strategic aim of government not the task of small firm owners. How and indeed, why should the small firm sector be given responsibility for job creation when their very profile – mostly small, mostly marginal, mostly services suggests this is not feasible.

This is not to suggest a homogenous, turgid population of small firms who are struggling to survive – some is true for some of course, but many, although remaining small and marginal, will also be sustainable and profitable over time as they have a secure customer and supplier base which works well at the micro level - so they are already making an invaluable contribution.

We know that about six percent of the sector do have the scalability, capacity and desire for growth – often these are innovating, science and technology firms or those, like the Starbucks example, who are in the ‘right place at the right time’. So, these growth firms will make a considerable contribution to the dynamics of the economy, create jobs and wealth.

Governments do have a responsibility to promote an environment which encourages entrepreneurship by maintaining debate and dialogue with investors, banks and venture funders in order to ensure a flow of appropriate finance. This should also promote education which prepares young people to think and act entrepreneurially (whether working for the NHS or a new bio-med firm) and also, ‘normalises’ self employment as a potential career ambition. The government also needs to review regulation and its impact on smaller firms, to encourage opportunities for knowledge exchange and transfer from universities in order to incubate and commercialise innovation.

By doing these things, It will create the right environment to enable and facilitate entrepreneurial thinking, ambitions and activities. I do accept that this will form one element of a vibrant economy and no matter how many white horses you provide, the average hairdresser, garage owner, plumber, builder or window cleaner is unlikely to don their armour and ride in to save the rest of us!

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Having researched and published extensively in these areas, Susan Marlow has undertaken research projects for the Economic and Social Research Council, the European Union, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), Barclays Bank, PROWESS (Promoting Women’s Enterprise Support) and the Home Office.

Current research interests focus upon the interaction between gender and high technology start-ups, incubation issues, failure and closure and institutional influences upon female entrepreneurship.

On Growth: Stevie Gray

2011-11-29T07:11:00.000-08:00

“Growth” – what an interesting word!

My immediate thoughts are of children who grow taller and heavier, with what seems to be every passing minute; until suddenly they are bigger and stronger than you are! The human baby takes nine months, generally, to grow before entering this world with the capability to survive. Animals vary, with elephants’ gestation period being the longest of all at 22 months and they arrive being able to stand up very quickly after birth!
As our bodies grow, so does our brain and our intellectual capacity, as it is stimulated by events that occur around us. Hopefully, as we grow and develop in our knowledge and physical capabilities, we also develop our understanding and our humility with regard to our fellow man.
But what about those who do not have an opportunity to grow intellectually? Or those who do not recognise that they have grown, other than in physical size? I find many who tell me that their job is boring and they do the same things all the time. I always try to encourage people to look for the best in their job and their personal life and I have never failed to find something that they have achieved or improved upon. Once this is recognised I find that they become a more positive person.
I have an employee, who had been with us for five years or more, when it became apparent to me that he had no literacy skills. Between us we rectified this over the next three or four years, until he reached level two standard. He won awards from the college he eventually attended and was so very proud of his achievements. The interesting thing with regard to this story is that not only did he achieve a skill, which many of us take for granted, but his whole body seemed to alter and ‘grow’ in the process – he stood tall. So he had grown physically as well, through a mental process.
I wonder if my first thought with regards to growth was of children, because I am a mother. Growth is in the papers all the time with regards to economic and capital growth. As always in economics we need to increase the quantity over a certain period of time, we must not stand still. Very much at the forefront of all of our minds at present, however I prefer to think of the human capacity for person growth.

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Stevie Gray is an HR Manager in a large hotel in Stratford upon Avon, where she has been employed for many years. She completed an MA in HRD at Warwick University in the late 90s. Her inspiration to study at this level came from her mentor Prof. Lynn Martin. She loves the sea and the countryside and recently completed her Day Skipper Theory Shore based Course - which she said was more difficult than the MA!

Enterprise Academy is just around the corner! Are you ready?

2011-11-03T07:41:00.000-07:00

What can I expect to gain from attending this programme?

Enterprise Academy is a programme of five interactive workshops targeted at third year students and alumni to raise their awareness of enterprise and making self- employment a viable option in current job market. Led by the MMU Enterprise Champion team attendees will work with a team of industry specialists to give them access to the latest knowledge, networks, information and skills necessary to achieve their goals.

I’m not sure what I want to do when I leave university so how will Enterprise Academy help me?

That does not matter. Enterprise Academy will provide you with essential knowledge and skills that will enable you to become an enterprising graduate. All graduates need to develop additional skills to ensure they stand out from the competition. You will be supported to shape out your emerging ideas for the future or even come up with new ideas with skilled people who will give you the support you need. If you don’t have a business idea, don’t worry come along and learn about how to build your personal brand.

Why is this programme important for me as a student?

Studying for a degree is a fantastic experience but having additional skills, knowledge and experience will ensure you stand out from the crowd. Enterprise Academy will equip you with practical knowledge that you can apply to your own field of study. It is increasingly important to be able to demonstrate that you can be an enterprising person able to innovate and lead. Enterprise Academy will develop you to achieve this.

I am really busy with my course, how can I fit this in?

The Enterprise Academy workshops take place once a month on a Wednesday afternoon from 1pm to 4pm which is the time for taking part in electives. Enterprise Academy is perfect to complete in addition to your degree course as it will enable you to develop additional and essential skills, knowledge and experience to enhance your future prospects.

What kind of support and direction can I hope to get in terms of becoming a better enterpriser?

Enterprise Academy is built around a brand new learning framework called I-plan. I-plan focuses on developing five essential entrepreneurial skills. Each interactive session will enable you to know more about each topic, try out each skill and apply it to your own situation. All you have to do is sign up.

Who is coordinating the event?

The North West Enterprise Champions team have designed, written and planned Enterprise Academy. We have helped over 1,000 MMU students to become more enterprising or launch their own business since 2008 (and we are passionate about it!). we have helped over 50 North West students, graduates and alumni to start their own business. We run a catalogue of workshops and courses as you can see here.

How do I know if Enterprise Academy is right for me?

Every new graduate needs more than a good degree to succeed after graduation. Employers are increasingly expecting their new recruits to have a working knowledge of how organisations work, be they big businesses, small businesses or social enterprises in both the public and private sectors. Enterprise Academy is designed specifically to equip you with those essential skills, knowledge and experience. You will meet new people and it will be fun too!

What kind of experience do the coordinators of the event have in this area?

The coordinators have a collective experience of over 50 years in helping people like you to develop their enterprise knowledge, skills and experience. We are also experienced at helping graduates to start their own business. We can’t wait to meet you and learn about your ideas for the future.

Is this really completely free? Where’s the catch?

Yes. Enterprise Academy is completely free to attend but the value is priceless. Not only that you will receive a certificate of completion so you can celebrate your achievement and demonstrate your enterprising skills.

How do I sign up?

It’s simple. All you have to do is visit our website or Facebook page and follow the links provided.

On Growth: Yibin Yang

2011-10-26T06:39:00.000-07:00

Five Chinese Tenets
Yibin Yang

In Chinese history, there are five tenets that are of great importance and are used to guide the behaviour of Chinese people. They are：仁（rén, benevolence), 义（yì，rectitude), 礼（lǐ，politeness), （zhì，wisdom), and信（xìn，fidelity).

There are various interpretations on the five tenets in history by scholars. Undoubtedly, the translation into English will distort more or less its real sense. Thus, here below is just a simplified guide to the five tenets.

Confucious (Yes, it is the Confucious that you know!) first gave benevolence, rectitude and politeness as tenets to live by. Then Mengzi (also known as Mencius, the second greatest Confucianism master) added one more value, wisdom, and another great, Zhongshu Dong, in the Han Dynasty added the remaining two and developed the tenets into what we now consider the complete five tenets.

The Chinese character for benevolence, 仁 (rén)， is composed of 二（two） and 人（person). We can conclude that this tenet deals with something about the relationship between two persons, in other words, about“interpersonal relationship”. Simply, in order to create harmonized relationships with those around us, we need to love people, to practice benevolence. At its core, the Confucianism ethics system prioritizes the interpersonal relationship in a variety of arenas, from filial piety to parents, to loyalty to employers and respect to elders.

Rectitude or righteousness, deals with treating people not in accordance with individual benefits, but in accordance with justice. Simply, do what is right and refuse what is not right. Benevolence and rectitude are together the core values of traditional Chinese morality.

We need to be benevolent and possess righteousness, but how is this achieved? The answer can be found in the next tenet, politeness. Politeness or courtesy is the detailed system that guides us to carry out benevolence and rectitude properly.

Wisdom, the penultimate tenet, is the intelligence of a thorough and profound comprehension of life, truth, and nature. Frankly, when we are governed by wisdom, we don’t get stuck in life’s tangles.

Lastly, fidelity, which isn’t just a way to strive to be, it’s an active state. As the Chinese character highlights, fidelity is comprised of the character for person and the character for word. So, fidelity is the word of the person. When you keep your word, you practice fidelity.

The five tenets of the Chinese culture are not rules to be governed by, but vehicles for growth. When we implement these five principles into our lives, we are bound to experience personal growth. The combination of benevolence, rectitude, politeness, wisdom and fidelity is a sure formula for growth and perhaps the best place to begin evolving as an individual.
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Yibin is an entrepreneur business owner of a Shanghai and Hangzhou based company which specialises in consultation services, importation, exportation, marketing and printing and packaging.

On Growth: Alex Connock

2011-10-17T03:37:00.000-07:00

Let's Pretend

Alex Connock

Hold the front page.

Actually, don’t hold the front page, because print newspapers are dying out, people get their information instantly from the internet, no one goes to the newsagent to find out the news any more, and that analogy is more or less meaningless.

So anyway, let your browser auto-refresh or something.

Because I’ve started a new company – in TV and in Manchester. It aims to tap into a whole new generation of Northern talent, to produce TV formats, to make an impact internationally. It’s called PRETEND, I’m working 15 hours a day on it, it’s fast moving, there are tons of opportunities on every front; I’m loving it.

But that’s the easy bit.

The tough bit is that the landscape has completely changed. The last time I did this (I started a previous company, in factual TV and radio in 1998, which eventually reached over 500 staff) the model was recognizably British. The initial idea was to mimic, albeit in a small way, production companies like the granddaddy of Manchester TV businesses, Granada, with output that sat on broadcast TV and radio, principally in the UK market.

However nowadays, that’s just not how the industry works. TV, like every other industry, is being upended by the internet and social media. (I love the French word bouleverse as a way to describe that.)

For a neat summary, take a look at the Vanity Fair magazine survey of who and what is hot in the global media right now. It’s Facebook, Zynga (who make Farmville), LinkedIn (who are registering two new users per second), Google+, and Spotify. Twenty years ago, it would have been a list of executives at the main US TV networks. Now, they barely feature.

Of course, producers do, and the traditional linear media is still huge. On the list are people like “Lost” creator J.J. Abrams and comedy producer Judd Apatow. But the balance has shifted so markedly to social media that you can’t ignore it. To make a great business in TV that is going to be relevant for the next decade, you’ve got to build it as much around YouTube and Twitter as a script and a TV treatment.

Yesterday I gave a speech to the creative courses in the fresher year at a big northern university. Of 300 students in the class, not a single one was not on Facebook. A business which barely existed five years ago and which was founded 4,000 miles away across the ocean by a guy still at college, has succeeded in capturing significant information about the lives of every single one of an entire class of 18 year olds.

Is there any other company that has achieved that? Would they all have a Mars bar in their pocket, or a Nokia phone, or Fairy liquid beside their sink? I guess the BBC might have impacted all their lives in the past 24 hours one way or another through TV, web or radio – but they won’t have given the BBC photos of their birthday party, or the name of their dog, like they have on Facebook. And many of them won’t have even bothered to pay their license fee, because they only watch TV on their laptop. (By the way, I don’t approve of that.)

So that’s what we are dealing with today.

TV production in the UK was a £3.2bn industry last year. It generated £560m in revenues from programmes and format sales. Britain is actually the biggest exporter in the world of TV formats. “Broadcasters around the world have outsourced the risk of formats to the UK,” says Tony Cohen, British-based boss of global TV producer Fremantle.

And yet – this is still an industry in transition to the social media age.

Starting a new production company in the middle of all that is as exciting as you can get. It’s about securing YouTube channel status while trying to think up the next great format. It’s about talking to Americans as much as potential commissioners in Manchester. It’s about marketing on Twitter, through blogs, and through search optimization. It’s about talking to students about how they’re live their viewing lives, and putting them on screen. And hopefully, it will be about everyone involved having a lot of very creative fun.

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Alex Connock has founded PRETEND [http://www.pretendtv.com] and is also Governor of MMU, and Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, Reuter’s Institute for the Study of Journalism.

To Innovate or Not to Innovate

2011-09-16T02:24:00.000-07:00

To Innovate or Not to Innovate?
Anyonita Green

Let’s be honest. Innovation rarely gets seen as something anyone could be involved with. It carries a stigma that implies it is best reserved for highly educated individuals in lab coats and has no space outside the scientific confines of a laboratory. Maintaining our honesty, most companies don’t incentivize innovation, a daunting flaw since you cannot have success without failure and since the very nature of innovation begets failure.

Inside the Fab Lab, Manchester.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly but expecting different results. On that same token, if growth is achieved by doing things differently, you could harbour the opinion that growth illustrates sanity whilst yielding innovation.

Before we go further, I am aware that innovation has become one of those snazzy buzzwords—everybody’s happy to throw it around in their business conversation, saturating every aspect of their work life with this word, but how many of us have actually stopped to consider innovation? Do we know what it is truly capable of? Are we culpable of boxing innovation into a place of “super fancy word with no meaning” instead of allowing it to become an action?

If we are honest, innovation currently compares disproportionately with high growth. The reason being is that many small businesses view innovation as a one-off as opposed to being something continuous and necessary for growth. In actuality, the key to a small businesses’ sustainability is the ability to be malleable and change with the market. An innovative small business is one that continues to offer new things even though it is tempting to just make one thing and flog it until its death.

Because of the vast differences between the wholesale market and customer expectancy, anyone in a small business who chooses to stand still and not to innovate, although they may experience some limited growth, will find that their market share will eventually decrease. For this reason alone, it is vital that small businesses embrace innovation and get in the habit of utilising it to the best of their abilities.

Nestled in Manchester’s city centre, in the up and coming area of Ancoats, housed in an oddly designed, striking building sits the Fabrication Laboratory, colloquially referred to as the Fab Lab. The concept of the Fab Lab began as an outreach programme led by MIT Professor Neil Gershenfeld, with the aim to provide easy access to tools for digital fabrication. Manchester is home to the only Fab Lab in the country; a notable accolade since there are over 90 digital fabrication labs looping the globe.

What better place for a hub of innovation to be situated than in Manchester with its rich history of inventions and big thinkers? One of the beautiful things about the Fab Lab is its purpose—designed for the public, it is a place where virtually anything is possible.

One of the first things manufactured at the Fab Lab.

When you enter the sprawling establishment, you are instantly face to face with a display of successful inventions and quirky products that were created there. The walls are covered with inspirational messages, encouraging you to think and to create, reminding you that you have stepped into a Willy Wonka-ish type world, “A place where you can create almost anything.”

We mentioned the difficulty small businesses often face when it comes to incorporating innovation into their work agenda. The Fab Lab is just the type of place that can help to address this difficulty and to overcome it by offering training or support in a broad sense and by helping business leaders make important decisions such as: Who in your company is going to lead innovation and innovative thinking?

Haydn Insley, manager at the Fab Lab, has given these four tips for innovation in business:

1. Keep your eyes and options open—don’t discount what you haven’t done before.

2. You, as the business leader or owner, do not have to come up with all of the ideas yourself.

3. Encourage creativity while being able to accept failure. Innovation, as we mentioned, begets failure. The simple act of looking at what you offer and thinking of enterprising ways to enhance that and improve on it almost guarantees that there will be some failure. Don’t be afraid of failure; learn from those mistakes!

4. Innovation isn’t just top-down; true innovation lets all ideas bloom. Anyone can have an idea for increasing revenue, bolstering sales or doing something a bit better than current practice. Someone serious about innovation will encourage these ideas and accept them when they come from even unlikely sources.

To recap, innovation is necessary, messy and doesn’t happen often enough. To continue to move forward in business, especially those of a very niche enterprise, we must be willing to embrace innovation and not to embrace it flippantly as an empty word without much meaning. We must be willing to get on our hands and knees and get in the very grit of innovation. Remember, anyone can innovate!

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Upcoming events at the Fab Lab that might interest you are:

· a Manchester Science Festival event in conjunction with the BBC where young people will be instructed on building robots;

· training courses for interactive electronic devices will be throughout September

· and the Fab Lab will be offering 25 percent off all projects completed before September.

If you are interested in learning more about the Fab Lab or would like to schedule some time where you and your employees can be taught about innovation techniques, then be sure to visit www.fablabmanchester.org for more information.

On Growth: Akousa Dardaine Edwards

2011-09-05T02:09:00.000-07:00

Personal Growth
Akousa Dardaine Edwards

There is really no magic formula for anyone’s path to personal growth and success.

Personal growth is a product of pursuing your dreams: your dreams are achieved by personal growth and it occurs when you become who you are, when you move towards gaining more autonomy; when you are moving towards your authentic self, when you are becoming genuinely who you are. Although our dreams are important and give us hope it is only through personal growth we find true happiness and inner peace.

Personal growth means that you are in the process of looking at your life, how you are feeling at the present moment, what is missing and what can be improved and working actively on improvement through education, new knowledge, increased awareness and specific changes.

The key is to strive for balance in your journey to personal growth, the balance between careers, potential relationships and financial independence. You are looking at your belief system and making changes to it.

So how does personal growth link in with entrepreneurship? Someone once said entrepreneurship is the highest form of personal growth. Being an entrepreneur can sometimes be a lonely journey where achieving your goals and dreams becomes a driving force. As an entrepreneur you have to constantly improve not only your business but also yourself. You will constantly be tested! New twists, turns, and surprises surface with exhausting frequency.

You’re going to develop character. If you choose to pay the price for success, you’ll find that it’s actually much harder than most accounts of business success would suggest. But through that hardship, great rewards are available including tremendous personal growth. Personal growth starts with you--when you make the decision to pursue it, to understand yourself, to improve your awareness, to work on your attitude and to believe in yourself and your potential.

People who have been through extreme hardships are those who are most beautiful. They have learned to take risks and turn those risks into opportunities. They have learned to compromise their present leisure in exchange for future growth. They have learned to welcome failures and prove other people’s doubts wrong. They have learned through their everyday business battles that it is always too late for giving up.

So when we grow through experience, are we not better, more confident and happier people by the progress we make? You see, obstacles we meet and overcome are necessary to our progress and vital to keeping our dreams alive.

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Akosua Dardaine Edwards is the founder of the Enabling Enterprise Project, which aims to assist women to start and grow businesses in Trinidad and Tobago. Akosua is a qualified management accountant (ACMA) and a Fellow of the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (FCCA). She possesses an MBA from London South Bank University specialising in entrepreneurship and small business development.

On Growth: Lucy Edgar

2011-08-18T02:55:00.000-07:00

I Heart Manchester

Lucy Edgar

The riots that took place in Manchester last week have invaded every area of our lives. They have been inescapable; on the news, in the papers, no matter where you look someone somewhere is talking about them. Who is to blame, how can we stop it, the damage done to businesses, the policy that should or shouldn’t be imposed on our nation’s youths. It’s a miserable and pessimistic world out there.

Or is it?

Manchester adopted me eight years ago when I moved here to be a student and never went “home”. Manchester is now my home, much to my mother’s dismay, but I like it here. Manchester takes a hold of you over time and before you know it, it becomes yours. When new students turn up in September and drop their flyers and kebab wrappers all over the pavements I feel a stab of resentment and anger. “Pick that up!” I want to say, “Don’t you know where you are? This is Manchester. This is OUR town”. And that is what makes this city lie so close to my heart. I own Manchester. It's my city. And this is, I think, what every person who picked up a bin bag and a broom last Wednesday morning was also thinking.

CfE staff Jennie, left, and Lucy, take to Manchester streets.
Another staff member, Laura, kindly took this photo.

The riots of last week were a really positive experience for me personally. Okay, I don’t have a business that had its windows put through and its stock stolen; I didn’t own a building that was set on fire, and my family and friends weren’t involved or worse, killed. But I was involved in the aftermath and I have never seen or felt such affection, pride and camaraderie in this city. As a troop of us marched down Market Street looking for debris to clear up, we were applauded by shop workers stood outside their damaged buildings cheering us on. Complete strangers were talking to us, apologising for not being able to help but really wanting to, others asking where they could join in, meeting other troops of cleaner uppers, comparing notes – if there was ever an opportunity to go out and restore your faith in the community where we live and work, then last Wednesday morning was it.

If we’re talking about growth, then this is the growth that I feel is important. The growth of pride that came to the fore from such a huge number of people, indignant that this kind of behaviour happened in their city. The growth of generosity as businesses and residents donated their time, supplies and refreshments to the clean up operation. The growth of the posters and messages that have appeared on the chip boards closing up the gaping holes left by the rioters that proclaim they are not defeated, that they are open as usual, that they may be empty but they are still working, but most importantly, that they too heart Manchester.

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Lucy Edgar is a world travelling, story telling anthropologist who enjoys making things out of paper mache. Turning her hand to being a grown up and utilising her skills as a control freak, Lucy is currently trying out life working in the Centre for Enterprise and finds she likes it there very much.

On Growth: Linda Baines

2011-07-27T02:19:00.000-07:00

Growth: From a Sunflower's Perspective

Linda Baines

As you may realise from the picture, I like to think of myself as a blooming sunflower (à la the film “Calendar Girls”), still interested in “personal growth” (which sounds rather “New Ageish” but isn’t meant to be). For me, “personal growth” means that I relish new ideas and opportunities. And I realise that I’m quite surprised (and pleased) that I am, and don’t even realise that I’m doing it or that it’s happening to me.

Without giving anything away, when I was 20 or so years old, I thought that you when reached 25 or even the big 40, that was it; you became and were a “grown up” forever, and ever. Nothing would ever change; you’d be immutable as a person, sort of set in aspic, in how you were, your likes and dislikes, even the kind of person you were, and that nothing would ever change or happen to you, that would be it. And I thought that I wouldn’t be able to go on the swings in the playground again.

But contrary to what I expected, I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Life does still happen; it happens around you and to you. You do still have feelings and emotions, and you can change; nothing is set in stone.

So what has this meant or does it mean for me? Well, it seems that I am developing several things in parallel: sustaining the day job, going back to academia long after I thought that I’d left it and developing my writing voice as part of this.

The academia thing was triggered by my employer offering to sponsor me to undertake a part-time Masters, which was related to my job, on a distance learning basis. That proved to be a wake-up call; going back to exams, revising and cramming, with all the nerves and panic that I’d thought I’d done with forever was a big shock to the system. And writing assignments, where you had to justify every statement you made or opinion you expressed with a reference was very difficult and constraining. Originality didn’t seem to be encouraged either. But it became more interesting when we moved on to the dissertation stage. As we were free to choose what we wanted to explore and research, it meant that we could follow our own interests. This made learning and doing the work much more interesting and self-motivating.

So there must be something about this academic lark as I’m finding myself going on to a part-time PhD, which means working on my own and places the entire responsibility for getting on with and delivering down to me. I must be crackers.

My reasons for doing so are that I’m nosey, curious about why certain things are done in the fields in which I work, and I want to carve out my own niche to try to answer some questions (although I’m still trying to work out what these are). And depending on how I get on, I could be a more mature, blooming sunflower by the time I get to the end of this.

However, getting to the end of it isn’t necessarily the main thing; the journey counts as well, the people I meet and the new experiences I have. All of these enrich me and motivate me and shows the younger me, how wrong I was.

So if you see me skipping down the road or on the swings in the playground, don’t be surprised; come and join me.

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Linda is head of corporate development at Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), involved in strategic and business planning and development, policy development and providing briefing and information to RCUK and BIS (Department for Business Innovation and Skills) as STFC's primary liaison point with its sponsor department.

Outside of this, she is researching the nature of the interactions between organisations and individuals involved in KE (via a just completed MSc at Manchester and a PhD at Southampton, which begins September 2011). Linda has significant trustee experience and is a mentor with Reach and UnLtd. She is also devoted to her Kindle, reading books, tries to knit and pottering kind of walking.

On Growth: Lionel Palatine

2011-07-18T02:27:00.000-07:00

Growing Pains

Lionel Palatine

Okay, so you’re doing things right and money is pouring in. It won’t be long before you need more of whatever has got you to the place you’re now in.

At this point it can be valuable to re-assert our vision. Take the time to look at ourselves and check that we are really happy with our lot. Are we growing into something we hadn’t envisaged? Are we going the way we really want or are we being carried along on a tide and no longer enjoying the ride?

Again, we need to examine our values because before long someone else will be examining our business. They may be a smaller competitor looking to give better value than you, they may be an enemy just wanting to create havoc for you, or they may be a bigger competitor looking to take you over. Whoever or whatever the challenges to your business are, they are also the challenges to your life blood, your passion, your creation.

You need to be aware of what is going on around you. You need to be able to change, to adapt, to monitor and restructure, to be flexible to the ever changing world and events around us. Staying small gives us the ability to do these things quickly and cheaply. Moving into a bigger league with people that have regular demands, without your passion to work for nothing, will easily make you cry, sap your bank balance and turn your success into complete disarray.

You need to plan for failure in some respects so that you give yourself more ability to grow. Consider what could be the worst thing that could happen to you or your business so you can create a strategic plan to overcome the problems before they arise and hopefully, never will, but being prepared can be the difference between life and death for your business and future dreams.

__________

Leaving school at 15 with no decent education is certainly not what I would recommend to anyone these days. I learn more day on day now than I ever did in formal education. What schools and teachers don’t seem to understand is that people can’t be taught unless they want to learn. Now of course I want to learn more than ever and simply can’t absorb enough information. Retaining that information is another matter.

After over 35 years running my own businesses, I still work more hours than I would care to record but the freedom of my lifestyle makes it difficult to know when work ends and play begins. Freedom has always been worth more than money to me. I like to make decisions not have others make them for me.

Lots of businesses fail, some before they even have chance to get going. Experience helps, I’ve had a travel agency and a spraying business, I have been director of a manufacturing company and a business consultant as well as a builder and property investor. Variety is the spice of life but you need to ensure you build your wealth on solid foundations.

On Growth: Anne Craig

2011-07-06T03:17:00.000-07:00

Growth
Anne Craig

“What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows - it must grow; nothing can prevent it.”Mark Twain

But although it sounds a bit maudlin to say so, surely all living organisms, whether plants, animals or humans, are geared up to grow to a certain size and then wither and die at their allotted time. The right food, water and the environment can accelerate growth and achievement. And unfortunately tumours, viruses and diseases along with “third party” interventions, accidents or environmental disasters all have an annoying habit of curtailing normal life expectancy.

The same cycle of birth, growth and death can be found in groups of living organisms – in their habitats, herds, countries - even civilisations. What were the factors that made the Greek, Roman or British Empires grow so huge and why did they fall? It’s OK, I’m not going there – it would take too long - but it is an interesting question given the current Greek fiasco and the UK’s own struggle for solvency. (I won’t mention Rome and the recent Time Team investigations which cast doubt on some of the Roman Empire’s claims in the UK!)

Those with a remit to support business growth have become used to speak of growth not in living organism terms but in terms of business profitability and economic growth. Both are needed desperately, given the dire daily news headlines. As I scribble, yet more well-established retailers have gone into liquidation and others have closed outlets with the loss of yet more jobs.

What if the same cycles of birth, growth and death can also be found in business and the economy? Perhaps it’s an inevitable part of our business evolutionary cycle? Perhaps the right business food, water and the environment affects business size and achievement? Perhaps we are just going through the business equivalent of tumours, viruses and diseases or third party interventions determined to curtail business life expectancy? What if we need a business life cycle to ensure the survival of the fittest?

J Willard Marriott, the American entrepreneur who was born in 1900 and who founded the Marriott hotel chain, once observed that “Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.” I suspect the fact that he beat cancer in his 30s and managed to live for another half century spurred the comment - but it has resonance for all living organisms as well as for organisations.

Admittedly, it feels really painful when you’re buffeted by these strong winds, and somehow you don’t care a fig whether your tree is getting stronger during the actual battle for survival! But perhaps the economy and those businesses which do weather the storm and the changing environment will emerge at the other end much stronger and healthier as a result?

_____________

Anne Craig has over 40 years' experience in business management at director level in both the private and public sector. During the past 20 years she has specialised in all aspects of Knowledge Transfer within the university sector, being awarded the MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2010 for her services.

She is heavily involved in the development of the knowledge transfer profession, part of which is a major national initiative looking at the Continuing Professional Development needs of those working at the interfaces between education and research establishments and their businesses and communities.

On Growth: Walli Ullah

2011-06-21T03:10:00.000-07:00

How Growth Happens
Walli Ullah

Growth happens in one of two ways; it can be organic or it can be through mergers and acquisition. Organic growth is usually more gradual and controllable than mergers or acquisition however it still needs to be managed. You need to understand how and why it's happening and have a plan and structure in place to cope with the growth. Without a plan you’ll run the risk of damaging your existing business, because problems can become much bigger with growth.

As an entrepreneur, you have an insatiable thirst for growth - it gives you instant gratification seeing revenues increase. Unfortunately, it can be like a very addictive drug; the more you have the more you want! When I started, I was driven to build the most successful business that I could and in the early days it was always revenue milestones that drove the business: let’s get to £10k a month, then £100k and the ultimate £1m a month. Even when we got there it still didn’t seem enough and it wasn’t until we’d reached an annual revenue of around £25m that we felt ready to take the foot off the growth pedal. At that point we felt we had a sustainable long term business and could start to be smarter about the contracts we wanted. After years of chasing revenue we came to the realization that actually profit mattered a whole lot more than simply growing the revenues. From then on in we re-focused the business on acquiring high profit contracts and set our sights on acquiring equally profitable competitors. The pursuit of growth didn’t stop; we just got smarter at how we grew and were now driven by profit. There comes a point in every business where you have to reassess your strategy and sometimes it makes sense to stop growing, to consolidate and focus on the bottom line.

Looking back it is difficult to know if I would change anything at all. I think the only thing I would do differently second time round is be more ambitious. When I set off on my journey I thought I would have made it if I had a £10m company. I wish I had set my target a lot higher from the outset at £100m. I’m sure if I had I would have got to £100m a lot sooner than I eventually did. I was very lucky in that I met a number of people on my journey who were willing to mentor me. One of the best pieces of advice I was given was to avoid taking new staff on until you are ready. If current staff are unhappy with extra workload, offer them a pay rise. Make sure you tie-in all your key staff with some kind of equity based scheme. Your staff are the ones that are going to have to deliver the growth and be responsible for the success of your company so make sure you look after them.

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Upon leaving school in the early 1980s, Walli decided he didn't want to work for anyone else other than himself. It was the start of a remarkable journey. Fast forward 25 years and he is a successful media entrepreneur, senior executive and a business mentor with the Prince's Trust. Walli's experience of creating something out of nothing and leading global companies has taught him how to deal with constant pressure and resolve dilemmas.

New Directions is just around the corner! Are you ready?

2011-06-09T08:11:00.000-07:00

The Centre for Enterprise is abuzz with New Directions activity! The space around our desks is taken over with stationery and promotional materials and each day, someone gives a hearty shout of the number of registered attendees. The girls who're heading up the event are excited and cannot wait for the event, but they are aware that a few more people who're looking to start their own business haven't taken advantage of this amazing opportunity. To make sure that everyone who could benefit from the event gets the opportunity to attend, they've taken the time to answer some questions that might be coursing through your mind:

What can I expect to gain from attending this programme?

New Directions is a brand new course aimed at providing a career springboard for people who want to launch their own business or be enterprising in their dream role. Led by a team of business leaders and career management specialists, you will be given access to the latest knowledge, networks, information and skills necessary to achieve your goals.

What if I have a vague idea of the type of business I’d like to start but no concrete ideas?

Then New Directions is perfect for you. You will be supported to shape out your emerging idea or even come up with new ideas with people with a wide range of skills that will give you the support you need. If you don’t have a business idea, don’t worry! Come along and learn about how to build your personal brand.

Why is this programme important for me as a student?

Studying for a degree is a fantastic experience but having additional skills, knowledge and experience will ensure you stand out from the crowd. New Directions will equip you with practical knowledge that you can apply to your own field of study. It is increasingly important to be able to demonstrate that you can see the difference between an idea and a viable business idea and between an opportunity and a business opportunity. We can help you to achieve that!

I think I have a really good business idea; will I learn what steps to take next?

Yes, definitely. The MMU enterprise support team will be on hand to offer practical and individual support to you and give you time to talk about your business idea. You will also be able to learn a range of other key skills that you will need to work for yourself.

What kind of support and direction can I hope to get in terms of becoming a better enterpriser?

A team of experienced enterprise educators and business professionals have put together a complete programme of activities for New Directions that enable you to develop or showcase your enterprise capability. So you will learn how to build your personal brand, apply your skills to solve a real life business challenge and learn how to motivate yourself to create and exploit opportunities. All you have to do is sign up.

Who is coordinating the event?

The North West Enterprise Champions team have designed, written and planned New Directions. We have helped over 1,000 MMU students to become more enterprising or launch their own business since 2008 (and we are passionate about it!).

How do I know if the event is right for me?

Every new graduate needs more than a good degree to succeed after graduation. Employers are increasingly expecting their new recruits to have a working knowledge of how organisations work, be they big businesses, small businesses or social enterprises in both the public and private sectors. New Directions is designed specifically to equip you with those essential skills, knowledge and experience. It will be fun too!

There’s huge competition in the field of start-up businesses, will I learn anything useful to help me stand out from the pack?

Absolutely. You will work closely with the MMU Entrepreneur in Residence, the CEO of Eco2Life, who is an experienced entrepreneur but who has also had a highly distinguished corporate career. He will share some of his knowledge, experience and networks to enable you to stand out from the competition. However, we will work with you as an individual as the best asset your new business has is you!

What kind of experience do the coordinators of the event have in this area?

The coordinators have a collective experience of over 50 years in helping people to develop their enterprise knowledge, skills and experience. We are also experienced at helping graduates to start their own business. We can’t wait to meet you and learn about your ideas.

Is this really completely free? Where’s the catch?

Yes. New Directions is completely free to attend and all refreshments are provided free too.

On Growth: Janet Green

2011-06-02T02:14:00.000-07:00

I have two kittens – Maxwell and Schrödinger (Schrody for short) that I got just before Christmas.

Brother and sister, black and tabby. They are the most delightful two kittens, so friendly and happy; a real joy to have around. They have given a new lease of life to our old dog, Zara, who lost her companion about 18 months ago. However, as kittens they can be persistent and demanding ... even if it’s only for attention. They are happy and bubbly and growing as kittens should do into what promises to be wonderful cat pets. These three pets are in many ways representative of my business and growth experience so far.

In short, I didn’t know what to expect when I recently started a business development course – and to be honest the jury’s still out; but I am optimistic and energetic about the possibilities unfolding for DOC Electrical.

It has transpired that a cornerstone of my business growth has forced some difficult questions which demand attention, and are, quite (shockingly) personal. And, like the kittens’ demand for attention, particularly when I’m busy doing something else, they need to be addressed at the time they intrude.

So, when I am busy developing business plans or researching ideas or realigning some cost bases, just like the kittens’ intrusion onto my lap, personal boundaries and socialisation processes (so deeply embedded in me that I am surprised to find them there at all), walk all over my shoulders and keyboard, and demand that I pay attention to and address their needs. Without addressing these personal boundaries and limitations I will not be able to develop the company along the lines I dream of.

So then I'm asking the question ‘When is enough growth enough?’ It is perhaps for me when I see these boundaries and decide that I don’t want to address them. For now, as surprised as I am to find myself questioning personal socialisation boundaries, I’m happy to do it – because I can see a benefit to myself and my business. But there may well come a time when that opportunity for growth has run its course and I will be able to say that ‘enough growth’ has been achieved.
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Janet Green is the owner of DOC Solar and Electrical. She graduated in 1999 with a BA in Business Administration from LJMU and entered the workforce full-time for the first time in many years, making the transition to her family business full-time in January 2010.
Janet has developed her company from electrical installation into sustainable energy, with hopes of making DOC a well-recognised and established deliverer of renewable technology in the North West.

The Importance of Allowing Personal Growth to Influence Business Growth

2011-05-26T03:05:00.000-07:00

The Importance of Allowing Personal Growth to
Influence Business Growth

Anyonita Green

I once worked as a vital member of a small, family-owned and operated business where a combination of changes in the market and an all-out refusal to adapt new ways of doing things stunted the business’s growth. Of course, had my past employers been fully aware, I’m sure things would have been different. But when someone in a leadership position is afraid of allowing personal growth to influence their business, the business suffers.

Naturally, if you presumed that the work environment was micromanaged because of the close-knit ties amongst the colleagues who doubled as family members, you’d be correct. As someone who was coming to the business (and into the family) from the outside, I was scrutinised, far more than I would have been in the same entry-level position at a larger company. Suggestions made to improve things were never scoffed at, but they were taken with a big dose of I don’t think so even before they were properly considered.

My past employers harboured the opinion of “We’ve been doing things this way since great-great-grandpa started the business back in 1903; why change now?” Even in an optimal situation with the best market outlook, the highest possible profit margin and a generally satisfied clientele, this type of thinking is dangerous and counterintuitive to growth. You can imagine what such a drastic closed mind would mean for a small, struggling business in the throes of a nationwide economic recession.

Family traditions and rituals can be beautiful avenues for linking us with relatives and for reminding us of our heritage and reminding us of loved ones no longer with us. For that reason, I understand my past employer’s need to keep as many things as possible the same. On the other hand, there comes a time to realise that changing things isn’t synonymous with forgetting. As leaders of a business, of a small family, of an ever-expanding corporation or just of ourselves, it is vital to make space for personal growth and to allow that growth to permeate its way into the rest of our lives and trickle down to effort change.

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Anyonita is an associate with the Centre for Enterprise, working with administration and improving the Centre's on-line presence. When not contributing to the Centre, she spends her time as a freelance blogger, a knitter and an inspiring chef.

On Leadership: Ruth Ashford

2011-05-05T04:31:00.000-07:00

How Personal Leadership Cultivates Professional Leadership
Ruth Ashford

As a woman who returned to a new career after having my child, I was not aware of my own leadership skills. However, moving from a career in the NHS, to marketing and sales and then finally into academe, I realised that leadership is about a range of skills – many are learned and practiced as one encounters all walks of life.

I was recently appointed as the Dean at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, which is one of the largest business schools in the UK! This means that I lead 150 academics and the challenges are great in the current climate.

The main skills, which I have developed, relate to understanding the people that I interact with as well as understanding and shaping the direction and focus of the organisation. My background means that I have led academics in a professional body as the chief examiner, academics in a learned society as the chair, as well as head of division of academics in marketing and retail. I have worked up from the bottom lowest role in business (clerical assistant and sales assistant in the 1970s) and academe (very junior lecturer in 1990s), so I understand the issues and challenges that colleagues are facing at all levels.

Reviewing, auditing the current situation and assessing the next steps to move from A to B and achieve the ultimate vision, is the strategic part of the game. The operational part of leadership, in my experience, is all about getting colleagues on board and working as a total team to the common goal. That’s not easy though – especially with different agendas running. However, as a leader, I try to ensure that I would not ask anyone to do anything I wouldn’t do myself, also I lead by example and undertake work in a difficult area that perhaps would not be normally completed by a dean – to show that if I am willing, then I would expect all colleagues to embrace.

As a female and a parent, I think that there are traits that women embrace which help to build strong leadership skills. We are used to managing various environments (home, job etc.), taking on different roles (parent, partner, etc.) persuading and nurturing the family to achieve the common goals. It’s not much different in business but just at a much larger scale.

Another very important part of leadership is about being constantly positive and giving off an air of confidence, which inspires others around you. This is not always easy, especially in such challenging economic situations. As a leader, I always look for the opportunities and good things in business and life in general. Indeed enthusiasm and positivism can be infectious. A smile and positive feedback to colleagues will be very much appreciated.

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Professor Ruth Ashford was appointed Dean of the Business School in July 2010.

After an early career in purchasing, marketing and sales, Ruth Ashford moved into higher education in 1992 to teach marketing and information technology. She joined MMU as a lecturer in 1993 and has built up considerable experience in course development, helping to launch nine new programmes, the Chartered Institute of Marketing Student Chapter and CIM-linked programmes.

She is a business education graduate of MMU and completed a PhD in Consumer Behaviour at Lancaster University. Her consultancy work spans syllabus design on behalf of The CAM Foundation and the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), as well as market research for the Cheshire Guidance Partnership, Precision Marketing and the Merseyside TV Production Company.

Professor Ashford is a Chartered Marketer and a Fellow (and Senator) of CIM. She is Chair of the Academy of Marketing, international conference Chair for ESCP Europe, and a reviewer for the Academy of Marketing and the Journal of Public Affairs.

On Leadership: Tom Bell

2011-04-28T04:06:00.000-07:00

The Language of Confusion
Tom Bell

On a mild, sunny day in late March I attended a meeting of the CELP at which we discussed the changed role of the SRP, the CSP, the CLAA, the CLIP, the SIP and the evolution of the CEDE from the original LSP and its role within the LAA, naturally this led us to discuss the removal of RDA’s, the demise of BL’s, the emergence of LEP’s, the CLEP, the EBP, the role of the CEBP and CBEC; they were members of BCCI. The meeting was chaired by a representative from a local B&E school who remembered the time of EFAC, which was funded by RRC and WLR (or URC as it was sometimes known). The chair was supported by a regional SSA who was familiar with the work of CLEAN and the NFEA, she also discussed BIS, CLG (formerly DCLG of course!) and DOE (not DOA) and she referred to funding from the NWDA. The meeting finished with a discussion about the role of RGF and RDPE. There was some confusion about the role of the CIA (Cumbria Inward Investment Agency of course!) and no ERDF was involved...get the picture?

Why does the world of economic development and regeneration do its level best to hide in an ever changing shroud of mystique by using another language that only we (sometimes) can understand? The language we speak may as well be like the Klingon language of the aliens in Star Trek; it is utterly unintelligible to the vast majority of people on planet Earth. “Indicators and Predictors of Beaconicity,” “Stakeholder Synergies,” “Market Making Facilitation,” “Cascading,” “Holistic Governance,” “Coterminous,” “Capacity Building,” “Downstream,” “Integrated Cascading Information Flows,” “Improvement Levers,” “Subsidiarity,” “Thinking Outside the Box,” “Transactional,” “Transformational” and last but not least, “Upstream Value Added Synergies.”

Those of us who look in confusion upon polished collections of such phrases can identify with the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes: “No, I still can’t see them.” When I started my working life in a timber yard, neither I, nor the people who worked with me, nor the people who managed us, would use words like “facilitate” or “additionality”. Had anyone been tempted to say to a colleague in the wood yard, “Would you like me to facilitate the safe lifting of that large stack of nine-by-fours to leverage some additionality to our roles and create a synergistic partnership?” they would have quickly been exposed to an express programme of cultural alignment.

By translating activity into an alien language, the world of regeneration risks appearing to be a closed loop, which is counter-productive. If a new era of enterprise and economic regeneration is really about innovation and finding new and more effective ways of doing things and genuinely engaging with the private sector then it needs to be exposed to as much new thinking and as many sources of ideas as possible. This won’t happen unless the language changes.

Right, I’m off to discuss a synergistic opportunity with a quasi autonomous stakeholder; speak soon!

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Tom works as a partner in innovation and support services. He is the recipient of an MBA with a focus on enterprise and has experience with providing enterprise support to a variety of businesses and people affected by social and geodemographic exclusion, specifically rural isolation, time poverty and disability. Tom’s other qualifications and achievements include an MSc in marketing and PRINCE2 qualification as well as being the first member of the CIM in Cumbria to become a chartered marketer.

On Leadership: Paul Walsh

2011-04-21T03:26:00.000-07:00

Leading from the Centre
Paul Walsh

Working in learning and development for over ten years, I’ve spent a lot of time in training rooms working with managers helping them to work out what management and leadership means to them. The same discussions often crop up, such as,

Is there a difference between leadership and management?; What is a good leader?; Are we born to be a “natural leader” or can leadership be learned?

There are many ways a trainer can approach these questions – discuss some models, display relevant quotes from well known leaders, talk about what their employer expects. But underlying all these questions is the assumption that there are leaders and, therefore, followers to be led.

As I work with participants to answer these questions, I can not help but recall a quote by leadership author Keith Grint, when he observes that, “leadership is too important to be left to leaders.” Ideally, we want everyone in our teams and organisations to feel empowered and as committed to our business as if it were their own.

Yet, there’s a contradiction here with how we tend to think about leadership. Writers and theorists on the subject often talk about “leading from the front”, transforming the values and goals of followers so they carry out their leader’s vision. But there are risks:

In the past three years, we’ve seen huge financial institutions bought to the very edge by leadership visions that have been so successfully taken on board by the organisation that no one thought to challenge them.
How does future talent develop if they take on their leader’s values and beliefs without working these out for themselves?
What about leaders so convinced by their own vision, they won’t listen to anyone who dares to dissent?

From this perspective, expecting followers to work within your values and vision doesn’t empower teams or individuals – quite the opposite. After all, pinning your hopes and expectations on a leader and accepting their beliefs without thinking them through for yourself is an easy option. Something people taking part in leadership development often realise as I challenge them to work these out for themselves.

As a leader, if you want teams to take responsibility and work problems out for themselves, consider if leading from the front is the best way. For instance, researchers looking at leadership across the world have found this isn’t the only approach to leadership. In China, for instance, business leaders aspire to lead from the centre – a well connected source of advice, support and facilitation for those they work with.

Next time you feel frustrated at someone in your team or business who doesn’t seem able to take responsibility, take the opportunity to reflect and ask yourself whether you are so busy leading, that they feel they have no alternative but to follow.

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Paul Walsh is a Training Officer at Manchester Metropolitan University and mentor with a community based employability and enterprise group in Warrington. Having worked in learning and development for over ten years, he has a research interest in the participatory evaluation of development programmes.

When not writing blogs, Paul is most likely to be found in a training room attempting to support participants’ development by inducing confusion, asking awkward questions and trying not to provide any answers.

On Leadership: Tim Sharpe

2011-04-14T07:51:00.000-07:00

Lead Us Not Into Evil: How Empathy Is Prerequisite for Ethical Leadership

Tim Sharpe

I don’t think I’m a leader. Day to day there are a thousand minor leadership tasks to be performed but simply performing them doesn’t make me a leader. No one ‘follows’ me as such; they’re either employed by me (I pay them to follow me), or a customer pays me to deliver some sort of benefit. I don’t view either as leadership – though through the MMU’s excellent LEAD programme, it’s something I’m trying to develop.

Recognising my limited leadership capability releases me from what I believe is a greater level of ethical responsibility. Whilst employees can resign and customers can choose to go elsewhere if faced with an unacceptable course of action, I think leaders demand a greater investment: trust.

This investment of trust means that a leader holds sway over opinions in a way that an administrator doesn’t, which means the leader has a greater responsibility to ensure this trust isn’t abused. Yet that’s surely not enough; for a leader to limit their concerns to their immediate followers risks the welfare of those indirectly affected. For example, the business leader has a responsibility to the families of employees.

Therefore the ethical leader must conduct their affairs in a manner which takes into account the wider impact of their actions, particularly on minorities or the disenfranchised. To fail to do so constitutes something more than just neglect of duty, or lack of respect - history suggests it can develop into cruelty of the most extreme kind.

Richard Holloway, in the exhaustive and excellent ‘Between the Monster and the Saint’, suggests that evil develops from an absence of empathy, a failure to be able to put yourself in the place of those affected by your actions, “the ability to not only feel for the afflicted, but to feel with them,” as Holloway puts it.

He rightly describes how human beings can accommodate cruelty with alarming ease when mobilised to do so by a leader. I would argue that this applies to all leaders, from leading a church group to a leading a country.

So my take on leadership is that a leader who does not demonstrate empathy is a tyrant. A leader can be driven, energetic, tough, demanding, or anything else they need to be, but without empathy they don’t deserve your trust.

As a final thought, my concern is that the ethical responsibilities of leadership are rarely referred to, despite recent lessons from history. We live in a world where Lord Sugar, a moderately successful remnant of the original 1980’s technology boom (others from that period include Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs and Microsoft Founder Bill Gates) is described in awed tones as Britain’s “most belligerent boss”. Is that a good thing? I think not; to my mind, belligerence doesn’t sit well with empathy.

About A&W & Me

I’m the co-founder of A&W, creators and operators of Sabisu.co, an information integration and management platform for networked enterprises. Drawing on my years in corporate programme delivery, A&W also offers consultancy on programme governance, project management and technology change management. I’m a bit of a geek and a technology enthusiast.

Feel the Fury and Fight Men's Cancer

2011-04-07T04:19:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, our men are under attack, and the only way to combat the advances are to spread the word. The truth of the matter is, one in three of them will fall victim to one of a trio of cancers exclusive to men.

Those cancers are prostate, testicular and penile and they are lurking in wait to wreak havoc. Each cancer targets men at different ages and awareness is the first step in preventing them. The culprits who are contriving to take away our men are:

Prostate
Prostate Cancer is the most common of the bunch, colloquially referred to as the 'old man's cancer' since it targets men between the ages 50 to 80. Prostate may be detected by difficulty passing urine, increasing passing of urine and pain whilst passing urine.

Testicular
Testicular Cancer is the trickiest of the bunch, manifesting itself in two types: seminomas and tumoursteratomas. The first type generally affects men aged 25 to 55 while the latter preys on the young, causing chaos from the age of 15 to 35. Testicular may be detected by swelling in the testicles, heaviness in the scrotum and pain in the back and lower abdomen.

Penile
Penile Cancer is a relatively uncommon type of skin cancer, arising on the glans, foreskin or shaft. Although this cancer usually afflicts men who are aged 60 and over, it can affect younger men as well. Change in skin colour, thickening of the skin and irregular discharge or bleeding are signs that could point to penile cancer.

To raise awareness of these cancers and to remind men about the importance of being tested, the charity single Feeling the Fury has been recorded by members of the bands Thunder, Gun and The Little Angels. Men Matter has teamed up with the Northern Song Collective to produce the song and a video.

So, what can you do?
Head over to your favourite music downloading site (iTunes, Amazon, Spotify) and download the song. If you have a man in your life who matters, get him to download the song, too, awareness is the first step towards prevention. If we're honest, even with their filthy habits, their football addictions and their infatuation with flatulence, men really do matter.

On Leadership: Tracy Townend

2011-04-01T02:59:00.001-07:00

Leadership--Thoughts by Tracy Townend

Puddle Ducks is an interesting business, as (currently) it is wholly owned and primarily operated by women for whom a flexible, part-time role is absolutely paramount. Our franchisees are a team of professional women who have been solicitors, accountants and senior managers in a past life and are now dedicating their skills and expertise to running their own business but still having time for their family.

At our franchise conference earlier this month, I had the privilege of speaking after our gala dinner. I believe that good leadership is about consistency of values and behaviours, and as a franchisor it is important to me that all franchisees have the same values and behaviours as I do. Only in this way can the culture of the business permeate through to all staff across the country.

I chose to quote two American essayists from the 1800’s. The first has inspired no lesser person than Barack Obama – Ralph Waldo Emerson. He gave this definition of success – which I suggested that we could all do worse than put above our desks:

“What is success?
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life breathed easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded.”

I proposed that of course this is a wonderful ideal that we can all strive to, but we that are all also driven by financial success - and that is our challenge.

The second American writer that I quoted, Norman Peale, wrote:

“All successful people have a goal. No one can get anywhere unless [s]he knows where [s]he wants to go and what [s]he wants to do.”

In conclusion, I challenged all our franchisees to “choose your goal, look after the people and the world around you, and remember to enjoy the journey!”

If I am right and good leadership is about consistency of values and behaviours, I sincerely hope that my franchisees see in my behaviour a reflection of these values and that, in turn, they and their staff can find a balance in their lives, enjoy their work and feel suitably rewarded for their efforts.

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Tracy Townend is founder and director of Puddle ducks Franchising Ltd. She founded puddle Ducks with her friend and business partner Jo Stone, in 2002, and they franchised the business in 2007. Tracy graduated as a chemical engineer from Cambridge in 1992 and worked as a chartered enigneer for both ICI and Shell before leaving to have her first child. She met Jo at this time, and a year later, Puddle Ducks was hatched. Puddle Ducks offers baby and child swimming classes from birth to 12 years with an emphasis on fun, confidence and grace in the water.

On Leadership: Paula Turner

2011-03-24T03:23:00.000-07:00

How Fashionable is Leadership?
Paula Turner

It’s 2011 and the word leadership has been around since Plato asked what qualities distinguish an individual as a leader. Across the centuries this term remains in vogue with a frequency that exploits language from the sports field, “going the extra mile,” “staying on target” or framed as a solitary journey or quest. But is leadership really like that, I wonder, and as a leadership tourist what will I find on the high street today?

Leadership talks a lot about style, and throughout your career you have probably been asked to wear a variety of leadership labels such as competence-based leadership, adaptable leadership, action-centred leadership, situated leadership and transformational leadership. If your leadership wardrobe could do with a spring clean, what models of leadership should be on the catwalk this season and what hot tips can we pick up? What could be "the new black" in leadership terms?

Notably, shop windows of training organisations promise holy grail insights into team dynamics and leadership know-how. Go in, try them on, but don’t be afraid to mix and match to suit your leadership shape. Some people hang their hats on models of leadership linked to behavioural, situational and contingency theories. These can be useful as they attempt to identify the common traits possessed by successful leaders such as decision taking, tolerance, co-operation, energy, persistence and dependability. Others prefer to use a leadership diagnostic tool that can show and measure your personal habits and ways of leading. Again, these can be a great way to start looking in the leadership mirror.

My recommendations are practical. Leadership is about organising a group of people to achieve a common goal. The main thing I believe, is that we should all develop the confidence to wear our own leadership label, and we must decide the moral and ethical value that is attached to it. So, know your leadership “colours” and stick to improving the things that work for you. Secondly, see leadership as a vehicle to get the right things done with a focus on outcomes over process.

Finally, can you tell if your leadership style is made of sustainable stuff? Is it fair to everyone in your personal supply chain and is it something you are proud to brand as your own? Would you win an award for it? It doesn't matter what you call it, as it is acutally just about acting decently. As John Adair once pointed out, "You can be appointed as a manager, but you aren't a leader till people choose to follow you."

So, for a dedicated follower of leadership, this season, try accessorising your leadership syle with a big dash of personal integrity, open-mindedness and self confidence. oh, and don't forget to look behind you!
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Paula works at the Centre for Enterprise as a Senior Enterprise Fellow. The core area of Paula's responsibility is in developing relationships to facilitate knowledge transfer activities and to mobilise new projects and services the Centre for Enterprise provides. She is particularly interested in making on the ground relationships happen between the Centre and regional, national and international public and private sector organisations.

On Leadership: Razia Shariff

2011-03-17T03:53:00.000-07:00

Knowledge: Necessary for Leadership
Razia Shariff

I recently attended a social leadership enquiry event to explore leadership in the social sector and from the discussions it was clear that the role of leadership was going to be key in navigating the new environment and landscape of austerity and coalition politics.

For me, leadership is more about ‘pushing the boundaries of thought and possibilities’ as Foucault would say, of the new framework that is being imposed on you by government policy and its implementation at the local government level. Student protests and sit-ins against the new legislation on EMA and tuition fees is an example of leadership, standing up for the principles that you believe in, organising social action and not giving up when you are being ignored by policy and decision makers.

The most productive form of leadership would be to push within the system to mould it into a better system to resist from within changes that are not right, rather than accepting them and trying to do the best with what you are given, or petitioning and protesting on the streets. It's about being ‘makers and shapers’ not just ‘users and choosers’ as Gaventa so aptly puts it in his paper on repositioning participation in social policy.

But to be able to influence and inform changes to the system you need to have knowledge and information to back up your counter arguments for change. As part of the Knowledge Exchange work at the Third Sector Research Centre we try to ensure that the research knowledge we produce is informed by the realities of policy and practice, and that the research we create is published and shared in ways that are of use and relevance to policy makers and practitioners.

Leadership is an acquired skill but to ensure maximum impact you need to make a convincing argument and for that, you need knowledge.

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Razia leads TSRC’s Knowledge Exchange Team. Her role is to ensure that the research undertaken by TSRC is transformed into action and impact by practitioners and policy makers.

On Leadership: Paulette Campbell

2011-03-10T02:27:00.000-08:00

Is Your Business a Dead Hamster?
Paulette Campbell

When my brother was about seven, he and his best friend at the time, Rodney, bought hamsters as pets. This followed months of begging and pleading: promises to take care of them and basically to never let them leave their sides.

As the big sister, I wasn’t particularly interested. Mice, hamsters, guinea pigs, surely these are all vermin and are not as cute and cuddly as kittens-- so why the interest?

Anyway, in line with family expectations, Danny took limited good care of the hamster, treating it better than his bedroom but worse than his school shoes. (For some reason I think he called him John, but cant remember why.)

About two months after the boys got their pets, Rodney came to our house in tears ... his hamster had died in the night and he and his Dad had buried it in the garden.
Danny was livid. Apparently hamsters hibernate (who knew?) and so Rodney had buried his pet alive.

A few difficult days followed – well, a difficult morning first when Rodney tried to exhume his pet – with Danny refusing to let John out of his sight (bath time was particularly fun as I remember). But then, after two weeks of non-stop care and attention, Danny got bored and returned to behaving like a small boy.

Then one morning it happened. He got up to go to school and John appeared very still ... and not particularly warm. Well, after Rodney’s abandonment of the standards associated with quality pet-care, Danny was adamant that John was hibernating, and he would treat him well. Unfortunately, Danny was wrong and John was not hibernating, he was dead.

How do I know? Well, my parents, two sisters and I had to live with the smell of a rotting small rodent in the house for a few days, so we were pretty sure the little guy was not sleeping. Convincing Danny however, was not so simple; he refused to believe that his pet had died.

He sang to it, he made sure food and water was available for when John ‘woke up’, he moved the cage around the house with him so that John would see him as soon as he woke up. (Can I just say here that, unless you’ve played dominoes with your brother and his dead pet, you really haven’t experienced the full spectrum of family life?)

Anyway, after two months my Dad could stand it no more – he turned to my brother and said 'the rat’s dead; throw it away now son.’ Okay, perhaps not a sentence designed to promote good mental health in later years, but he had a point.

So, what has this to do with running a business? Well, quite simply – how do you know your business isn’t a dead hamster? (See how I switched the normal and well-known ‘flogging a dead horse’ analogy there, but it’s the same point really.)

No matter how enthusiastic and motivated you are about creating and running your own business, it will be a waste of time unless you acknowledge that your business is alive and in need of continuous attention and support, or else it will die.

Danny really, really wanted a pet, but was blind to what his pet needed. Looking at your business:

1. What is it that you really want?

2. What is it that your business really needs to survive?

3. Where do these needs conflict and contradict?

4. What do you need to do to close the gap?

5. Which elements of that are entirely up to you? Which elements are dependent on people or things outside your control?

6. What are some attitudes you could adopt to make it more likely that you will get what you want? What are some attitudes it might be useful to let go of?

7. Create an initial action list based on those things within your control that would make it more likely for your business to succeed. As new ideas come up, ask yourself:

a. Will this increase the likelihood of my getting what I want, either now or in the future?

b. Will this increase the likelihood of my business succeeding and surviving?

If you need any help working on a plan to move your life forward (before you die!), why not spend time with a personal and professional coach (such as myself!) and fine tune what you want and how you can go about securing it.

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Paulette Campbell is a personal and professional life coach addressing her clients fully and working with each aspect of their lives to overcome and acheive their personal and professional challenges and goals.

On Leadership: Paul Nash

2011-03-03T03:33:00.000-08:00

Leadership--The Clue is in the Title
Paul Nash

Whether you have aspired to greatness or have had greatness thrust upon you – and it’s sitting a little uneasily on the shoulders – you have to get used to the idea that you’re responsible and that’s not quite the same as just being in charge and telling people what to do.

Know yourself; understand your strengths and weaknesses. Embrace diversity; engage people who are a counterpoint to you, having a shared vision is not the same as being of like minds. An organisation of like minds is less likely to challenge, less open to innovation and is more risk averse.

There should be no such thing as “need to know”. Avoid mushroom management; communicate, communicate, communicate and then communicate some more. Remember that communication is a two way process and control requires feedback. Don’t shoot the messenger; rumours about dead messengers soon get around and before you know it, there are no messengers willing to sacrifice themselves. Information belongs to the organisation, not the individual so think long and hard about how information is managed. Information is the business intelligence and how you capture and use that intelligence should inform decision making and underpin management of risk.

Take risks; risk aversion is not risk management and avoiding all risk will slow your progress. There will always be risks, manage them rather than bleed energy by avoiding them. Managing risk is what will open the doors to innovation and will enable you to take advantage of the talents around you.

Lead from the rear and be quite clear about where it is you’re going. What’s the end game? What will success look like? How will the benefits be realised? Knowing where you’re going is not quite the same as knowing how to get there and that’s important because there will be a need to innovate on the way. Being committed to a fixed route may be leading from the front but it’s no good if you’re losing people along the way who are following from behind. Leading from the rear means that you can guide everyone to the end point but people can find their own way.

Never make people feel disempowered. Micromanagement only feels as if you are in control until the number of balls in the air exceeds the theoretical maximum. Matrix management is never going to be an easy option but those individuals who are on the bleeding edge of delivery know a thing or two that you don’t. While you’re responsible at the end of the day you have to trust people, they are your most valuable resource. Individuals who are empowered will solve problems for you and will repay trust.

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Paul Nash is a business consultant with Penval Project Support Services Limited. Penval provides discrete project support to private and public sector organisations. Penval's recent work includes delivery of Technology @ Work for Business Link West Midlands, design and delivery of a dissemination strategy for Regional Action West Midlands and developing project business cases for the Delivery Innovation Team at the Department of Communities and Local Government.

On Leadership: Julia Rouse

2011-02-24T03:25:00.000-08:00

Working All Day and All Night?
Julia Rouse

Does entrepreneurial leadership mean pouring all your energy into your business? Working all day and evening and sleeping little, as Margaret Thatcher claimed to? Does being a business leader mean forsaking family or personal life? Does that exclude mums and modern dads from entrepreneurship?

Well, let’s face it, running a small firm is very demanding, particularly at certain phases such as start-up. And, on average, business owners do work longer hours than employees.

But working long hours does not necessarily equate with being productive. Leaders of small firms have to master multiple skills. It is the lucky few who are good at working their networks, getting service delivery right and doing the books. For most of us mere mortals, skill (and motivation) gaps reduce productivity. Which means we spend more time than we should getting certain stuff done.

Productivity can be improved by working smarter. How? Well, first of all by investing in skill development to get better at the things that take too much time. All business owners master basic book-keeping eventually – so experience helps. But sometimes it is more productive to invest in learning up-front – go on a course or get someone in your network to coach you.

The demands of small business can also be shared or delegated. In fact, team-led businesses may have more growth potential. Not surprising really – more leaders means more time and skills invested. Working in a team can be particularly helpful if you want to work part-time but have the vision for a full-time business.

Once you have the capital and demand, delegating to employees is an obvious route. Although independence-minded business owners find it hard to delegate. And, to be fair, finding good staff that you can trust is not easy. Again, getting some expert advice on how to structure your new opportunities may help. Depending on your sector, you could also try the associate model – drawing in skills from other self-employed workers when you need them and gaining work from these contacts when they’re overwhelmed, or bidding with them to win bigger contracts.

Before the big time sets in, business owners have long relied on family and friends to share their workload. Blagging help may help. But don’t be tempted to employ these folk if they’re not productive at what you need them to do!

Lastly - maybe if we try to be more systematic about the opportunities we’re pouring our energy into, we could we stop doing some of the stuff that’s keeping us away from our families?

Oh, before I go, I’ve been enjoying ‘Follow the Leader’ on Radio 4 – catch it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00xckjw. Apparently leaders can be anti-social – all the more reason to make sure you keep up the social niceties via a social life!

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Julia is a highly experienced researcher who has received awards from prestigious funding bodies including the Leverhulme Trust and Economic and Social Research Council. With Professor Lynn Martin, she leads research in the Centre for Enterprise. She is passionately committed to knowledge exchange drawing maximum value out of new knowledge creation by informing policy and practice and creating new knowledge by working with small businesses and their supports in the real world.

On Leadership: Bob Jerrard

2011-02-17T03:21:00.000-08:00

Leadership
Bob Jerrard

Leadership is difficult to define but always involves both flexibility and anticipation; for a small company this can be inside or outside its management structure. Perhaps we all would prefer to work inside where leadership chimes with management. Both work place conflict and interesting academic discourse develop when they don’t.

Leadership in small design-based companies, where every employee takes a keen interest in the new products the company is developing, centres on the life of those products rather than on the insider management process. From researching risk in such companies I’m struck by the lack of management that product innovation actually has. I’ve noticed through interviewing whole companies that everybody appears a design expert, with preferences, criticisms and detailed knowledge of current projects. By focusing on innovatory projects, it is in everybody’s interest to share optimistic risk, as marketplace failure will equally affect all in the company.

• Is it naïve to assume that products of aesthetic design can provide leadership?

• How can the intrinsic motivation of ‘the very new’ be acceptable to the boardroom?

If companies reflect society then these questions are not naïve. Our lives revolve around gadgets, devices and services, which we all say are ‘brilliant!’ and we all have an expert eye on what is available to purchase, their benefits and comparative values.

It is clear that creative people and their style with a company can also be leaders; idiosyncratic behaviour is often admired where we are faced with ever-increasing use of detailed risk assessment. This is because products that are developed from designers’ ideas require many other skills to bring them to market.

Novelty in lifestyle is often viewed as synonymous with equally novel commercial activities. Much has been made recently of the legitimate development of new ‘class divisions’ in society, in particular the growth of city-based creative classes. These represent the development of new partnerships between previously distant individuals, for example between artists and technologists in the development of new products and services. At the heart of these ventures is what might be called the production of ‘thought’ leadership, that is, new associations of ideas, which represent for those involved, a collective challenge to the status quo. This used to be seen in company design offices, where the designer (the only employee allowed office plants and the radio on all day) naturally set out to form eclectic partnerships within the company because their role was uniquely, a future one.

Management and conformity are an old married couple whilst organisation and creativity often are seeking to elope in order to find a lasting partnership. If a company wishes to compete for innovative management reputation they might first seek out their creative class and allow it to contribute to its strategic leadership. I believe that leadership through designed products and their designers can provide good lessons in risk management for all small companies.

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Bob Jerrard is the Emeritus Professor in Design in Design Studies at Birmingham City University, Institute of
Art and Design. His PhD and early work as a research fellow at the Royal College of Art centred on the specific problems faced by technology users in the creative industries. He has published widely on theoretical and social aspects of design. He is a fellow of the Design Research Society, an associate editor of the Design Journal, a member of AHRC’s Peer Review College and a research consultant for several UK universities, EPSRC and international publishing groups.

On Leadership: Jane C. Barber

2011-02-10T02:45:00.000-08:00

Leadership vs. Management
Jane C. Barber

The LEAD Programme is a programme for business leaders. Questions that many people interested in the LEAD Programme often ask are, “What is leadership?”; “What makes a leader?” and “What is the difference between leadership and management?” This is a far-reaching and complex debate, but I would like to share here some thoughts about the difference between leadership and management.

At the core of the difference are the different behaviours exhibited by managers and leaders, as well as the way those individuals choose to motivate others. These “others” can be those who work for them, or those whom they wish to influence to follow their lead in a non-subordinate scenario. However, it is important to understand that the roles of leaders and managers are not mutually exclusive. Many people fulfil both roles – being a manager whilst at the same time clearly exhibiting the differentiating traits of being a good leader. It is fair to say that it takes a lot more energy to be a good leader than it does to merely be a good manager!

Leadership has been described as the process whereby one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a task. Definitions more inclusive of followers have also emerged. Alan Keith of Genentech states that, "Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen."

According to Ken "SKC" Ogbonnia, "Effective leadership is the ability to successfully integrate and maximize available resources within the internal and external environment for the attainment of organizational or societal goals."

Management tends to be centred around a transactional approach. The manager has subordinates over whom he has power because of the heirarchical nature of their relationship – the old fashioned master and servant approach. The subordinates tend to do what they are told by their superior as part of the contractual relationship between them. The quid pro quo is that the manager is paid to manage resources. He directs and issues requests in relation to work related tasks, and the subordinate is paid to follow direction and to execute tasks as required by management.

Management generally centres around control and task orientation within a relatively short-term time frame. Managers will often be risk averse and will continue to do things in the way that they have always done them, being disinclined to try new approaches. Within a traditional management culture there is little room for well developed emotional intelligence. The focus is on tasks, rather than people.

Leadership differs from management in that leaders inspire others to follow them. The leadership model is a transformational one, not a transactional one. It does not centre on a power based relationship. People choose to follow a leader. The action they take of following is a voluntary one. Leaders do not issue instructions or commands, but rather they enthuse others to make a contribution. They encourage them to venture outside of their comfort zones to explore new ways of achieving a desired result or outcome.

Effective leaders communicate the benefits of doing something by example. Leaders persuade by demonstrating how things could work. They are interested in people and in motivating them. They understand that different approaches work with different people, and put time and effort into working out how best to engage individuals by firing their imaginations.

Leaders possess sound values and share these values with their team. This sharing encourages others to adopt the same values, to create a culture of mutual respect and loyalty. A good leader creates an environment whereby individuals are truly self-motivated to contribute to the success of their team, whilst at the same time working towards achieving their own personal goals. Leaders engender a win-win situation.
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Jane C. Barber is a graduate of the initial MMU Lead Manchester cohort. She is an NLP practitioner, a certified business coach and a law graduate. Jane works with clients in the SME market sector and has held executive and senior management roles at such companies as IBM and Lenovo Technology.

On Leadership: Anne Craig

2011-02-01T02:03:00.000-08:00

Leadership
Anne Craig

I met an impressive army officer recently receiving his DSO from the Queen for services in Afghanistan. He exuded an amazing aura of calm confidence, was at the peak of his professional and physical powers and was utterly charming. I felt very priviledged to have spent some time with him.

He got me thinking about leadership.

In my career, those who demonstrated the best leadership have been inspirational:

The charismatic CEO who practised "management by walking about" prior to becoming a management technique, and who always made time for his staff, building his business into the most profitable in the company before he was wisked off to set up a new venture overseas.

The exasperating, creative, energetic entrepreneur who forced those around him to take chances, move out of their comfort zone and believe in themselves, while getting every ounce of blood from them in the process!

The talented and generous boss who, given the task of setting up a new venture with a mixture of staff drafted in from other parts of the organisation, built them into a cohesive, loyal team which transformed the venture into the most effective high-growth part of the organisation.

But for each of those inspirational leaders, I have workd with some dire individuals in senior positions who lacked basic leadership qualities. That said, I probably learnt more from them-even if it was what NOT to do!

The famous director who was drafted in at huge expense to transform a company and who bombed; he couldn't translate his success into his new company whithout his previous infrasturcture and team. I always suspected we had the wrong man!

The nationally-renowned specialist who was task oriented and so busy trying to do everything herself she forgot that her staff needed motivation, guidance and "esprit de corps".

The CEO who was such a perfectionist that if someone disappointed him he had fiery, bullying tantrums--in front of everyone--with a resultant withdrawal of respect.

The manager who alienated a bright-eyed new graduate during their first meeting by telling her she had no hope of a career with the organisation since she was engaged to be married! (I proved him wrong of course, and thankfully attitudes like that have been eradicated--at least overtly.)

Overall?
Leadership qualities are demonstrated by those who build--and work through--effective teams, who inspire loyalty, respect and admiration from others and who possess strong personal abilities and skills in their chosen professional environment. Their era and environment shapes them. And yes, the best leaders have a leadership "aura" just like the army officer awarded the DSO.
_________
Anne Craig has over 40 years' experience in business management at director level in both the private and public sector. During the past 20 years she has specialised in all aspects of Knowledge Transfer within the university sector, being awarded the MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2010 for her services.

On Leadership: Andrew Broadhead

2011-01-27T08:49:00.000-08:00

For the Price of a Bacon Sandwich ...
Andrew Broadhead

When I think of ‘leadership’ I am always drawn to a classic management science cliché; "One may be appointed a manager, but not a leader". This may be a cliché, but I think it’s true, and it summarises my view of leadership in organisations.

When considering 'leaders' we often expect traits to be displayed by individuals who have been appointed 'manager' or those in senior positions. But displaying ‘leadership traits’ is not exclusive to these groups: what about the leaders at the coalface?

Examples of leadership can be seen throughout organisations and leadership traits can be found in a variety of situations.

My favourite example is from an old colleague of mine who was a chef for the Toby Carvery brand, then part of Bass Leisure Retail. Upon discovering that his co-workers were flagging, as their workload mounted and they hurtled towards the all important lunchtime service deadline, he disappeared in to the kitchen. He returned with a tray of bacon butties, oozing with brown sauce and accompanied by several pots of tea. The team duly dug in, made short shrift of the butties and got back to work and delivered a seamless service.

You could argue that the team would have pulled it together minus the bacon break, but having witnessed this first hand, I would suggest that this leader’s intervention did help, providing a timely one-off motivational boost, but perhaps more importantly, his own bacon butty based leadership legacy.

Nobody told or asked him to do this, but in doing this he engendered great motivation and commitment to the cause. My colleague wasn’t a manager but his initiative and foresight shows leadership.

Great leaders set and continually reinforce the desired behaviour from those whom they lead. These behaviours then become part of the fabric of the organisation and with it the legend of great leadership is created.... all for the price of a bacon sandwich.

----------
Andrew Broadhead is currently Head of Marketing for Richardson Eyres, a value added reseller specialising in data centre technologies, where he is responsible for delivering incremental business opportunity and the company's brand and messaging strategies. Andrew formerly held sales and marketing positions with Dell, where he was the recipient of the 2003 IDMA Award for Excellence in ROI. He is a graduate of Nottingham Trent University with a B.A (Hons) in Hotel & Catering Management.

Andrew also has a number of passions outside of work including playing golf, football and petanque, writing & illustration and music. Andrew is also a qualified sound engineer and is currently working with the Salford Talking News charity as a sound technician.

Disappearing Regions

2010-11-22T03:14:00.000-08:00

The removal of the regional badge from many institutions means that the 'North West' tag will no longer badge areas in their promotions overseas and their efforts locally. Is this good or bad? Will any of us know the difference?

Generally most people have a local allegiance with a very small 'l', to their local town or village, with many applauding the disappearance of regional bodies such as the North west Development Agency.

Those with an eye to Europe and international work however, don?t share this view.

A recent survey of companies in Manchester and Cheshire showed more than half of the businesses identifying doubts about the change and the need for regional representation in Brussels to ensure a good share of regional funds comes to the North West and to promote the area. Will the new bodies ? LEPs- and councils be able to do this? We'll be debating the issue in a workshop specially for those in these new bodies in March next year? more to follow, contact, l.martin@mmu.ac.uk for details

Growing Pains?

2010-11-10T06:50:00.000-08:00

How is the new economic environment really affecting companies? There are times when the media would have us believe that there is no good economic news and that the county is in the grip of dire recession. Talking to companies however provides a different story. A recent survey shows those in construction or those supplying the public sector have frozen recruitment or shed staff. Those not doing so however have expanded with manufacturing companies reporting good prospects for the next 12-18 months. What's your experience? Do you have ambitions for your own firm to grow in the next 12 months? We'll be exploring this with some small and medium sized firms in January next year. If you'd like to be one of them and have more than 5 employees, please contact b.zhang@mmu.ac.uk for more details.

Centre For Enterprise is expanding its pool of Coaches for the LEAD programme

2010-09-15T06:16:00.000-07:00

Calling all business coaches!

Please click the following link to be taken to our main website where you can find out more information on how to register your interest as a business coach for the LEAD programme.

Thank you very much

The CFE Team

Final Installment

2010-09-10T03:50:00.000-07:00

Good afternoon everyone,

Please click the following link to be taken to the final installment of the twitter videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__HSeyDqpKQ

We hope that you have enjoyed them!

Best wishes,
The CFE Team

Bootstrapping study begins after prestigious RAKE research award

2010-09-08T02:36:00.000-07:00

Great news everyone, our top researcher Dilani Jayawarna scoops one of just four awards linked to aiding economic recessionary recovery. Bootstrapping is the sharing of resources to reduce unnecessary costs. We ask “Do social enterprises pull themselves up by their bootstraps!?” This study should give us some answers to that. Please visit our website to read more on this http://tiny.cc/1axwh

Thanks

The CFE Team

twitter 2

2010-09-03T05:15:00.000-07:00

Good afternoon everyone,

If you enjoyed the first 'how to' twitter video please click the following link to access the second video http://bit.ly/MMULEADTwittervideo2

The third video will be available soon, so keep checking our blog.

Best wishes,

CFE Team

twitter

2010-08-31T08:02:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

Here at the Centre for Enterprise we have been working with Dan Sodergren from Great Marketing Works to bring you some mini ‘How to’ videos. This first series is made up of three videos on how to use and get the most out of twitter. Please click the following link to access the first of the three videos http://bit.ly/MMULEADTwitterhelpvideo1 where you will be able to find out what twitter is and how to get the most out of ‘tweeting’ the other vidoes will also teach you about communication and tactics on twitter. We hope you enjoy the videos and that, if you were not tweeting before, we hope you will be tweeting now!

Happy Tweeting

The CFE Team

August

2010-08-12T08:10:00.002-07:00

Hi there everyone,

We're not on holiday just working on various proposals for funding and research so won't be blogging again until September.

Enjoy August wherever you are

See you all soon

CFE Team

Kebabs: An update on the first “Tea with the Prof” - Innovation is where you find it

2010-06-21T16:30:00.000-07:00

If you took part in the first session of “Tea with the Prof” TM you’ll know we were exploring some of the stereotypes around innovation and entrepreneurship. (If not, well, we missed you but you can catch up on some of it on our site). The types of industries and business characterised as innovative have been stereotyped to particular sectors, affecting perceptions of who is innovative and what it means to be an entrepreneur.

Just as a reminder to me that you should never take that sort of thing for granted, I spotted a news item on the world’s first kebab trade fair. As a vegetarian, I’ve never actually eaten a kebab, donner or otherwise, but if you’d asked me to guess then I think I’d have said that Turkey might dominate the industry. Not so, Germany now holds that crown, hence its hosting of the kebab world trade fair. And would you have guessed that it had a reported 2.5 billion annual turnover?

Ah, but where does innovation come in you might ask? Well, a highlight of the show was reported to be a remote-controlled donner robot, using a digital camera to guide a blade through the meat, which claims to improve hygiene, reduce costs and accidents from the traditional methods. If you’re at least expecting the inventor to be Turkish, think again. The Donner Robot is produced by entrepreneur Ahmet Kalyoncu, Cypriot-born with Vietnamese heritage.

Once again, who does innovation and how they do it might surprise you! It could even be you. Have your say at in the comments below.

Catch up with us at the next “Tea with the Prof” TM on 22nd June 9-10.30am at Steelcase Solutions. It will focus on how entrepreneurs identify and exploit opportunities.

Is there money to be made from Going Green?

2010-06-21T16:26:00.000-07:00

Lots of questions this week! Important issues though too so stick with them.

Is government support likely to dwindle for non-profit environmental sectors despite climate change and achieving environmental balance still being formidable problems? How will not-for private-profit organisations fund their important work in the new realties of the tighten-your-belt economy? This month some Centre for Enterprise team members explore these questions by supporting the development of business processes in not-for-profit and other third sector organisations as part of an ESRC project.

Why? Because the work of large environmental organisations like Groundwork UK impacts on communities across the UK and in parts of the USA. They develop innovative products and services at a local community level to reduce fuel poverty, address energy efficiency and contribute to actions on climate change. Could these innovations be transferred and marketed in other contexts? How can new markets be identified and these brands be positioned to make money to support core Groundwork services? As a first step, Groundwork and CFE are taking a close look at activities in energy efficiency and we’ll keep you up-to-date with how the project goes...

But what do you think? Do you have any views on whether or how this should happen? Any ideas on supporting crossover from third sector specialisations to mainstream markets? Have your say: comment on these issues on below.

Have we any good examples of companies who have gone green here in the Northwest of England or further afield? Examples for next month’s green blog should be sent to l.martin@mmu.ac.uk.

Innovation is where you find it

2010-04-20T16:18:00.000-07:00

If I ask you to tell me the first picture that comes to mind when I say the word innovation, what image does this summon up for you? (OK this is nothing to worry about; it won’t tell me anything about your mental state. Trust me, I am a doctor. And don’t try to be too clever here - there are no right answers and no prizes. So what image appeared?)

Recent surveys with UK and international students have shown innovation equals high technology from their perspective. High technology here means aerospace, fast cars, robots and what are sometimes seen as boy’s toys, gizmos produced by M in James Bond. Funky, futuristic. Some drew scientists with test tubes, white coats and really bad hair (or none). Others wrote words down to add to their pictures. Nanotechnology. Biotechnology.

Any of these work for you? In my mind I always see a small, threadbare but immaculately clean Indian man behind a barrow of fruit in bright sunshine.

I met him on my first trip to Delhi. I was staying in an American chain hotel, hot and cold running everything and the same décor worldwide. He was a fixture on the grass verge opposite. By day he sold fruit and vegetables from an old wooden barrow. By night he slept on the barrow or on the grass, his washed shirt carefully hanging from the fence behind him which surrounded an enclave of apartments he could never afford. Not much to learn you might think. Certainly nothing about innovation.

But I learned a lot from him.

The first thing was always to challenge my assumptions. I judged him to be a poor man, desperately poor, probably illiterate and innumerate and eking out an existence with little hope of change. I imagined him as a city dweller without family connections since I never saw anyone help him with the barrow - whether he pushed it away to sell elsewhere or stood behind it and sold to passers by.

In fact, he was part of a very large extended family and community, based out in the village countryside. The first thing he did early every morning was talk to them on his mobile phone. The second thing was to receive photos of what was available today, which he forwarded to his customers in restaurants and hotels across the city. Deals were struck and the fruit and vegetables were brought in by a posse of relatives and others to deliver, freshly picked and packed, in time for preparation of meals for the day.

He had been doing this since acquiring the phone and had built up a large business, with a turnover that supported children to attend schools for the first time and improvements to the infrastructure of the village - and the lives of its inhabitants.